With only two weeks to go until Pesach, I wanted to post about a famous story about Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, along with some fantastic details that didn't quite make it into the popular version of the story.
From 'The Making of a Godol' (pg. 946; italics in the original, bold mine):
Another example of my father's youthful frumkeit is connected with the famous story demonstrating his abiding by his word uncompromisingly. It is public knowledge that he was once invited to eat in someone's house on Pesah, and not wanting to eat (for a reason discussed below), he gave his host the excuse that he did not eat שרוייה (soaked matzah, "gebrokts"). Having made such a declaration, he no longer ate gebrokts for the rest of his life. What is not commonly known is that the episode occurred at the home of the Alter of Slabodka when my father had been served a soup with dumplings ("knaidlach")... when he had informed the Alter that he would not eat the knaidlach because he did not eat gebrokts, the Alter said forcefully, "I'm telling you to eat!" and my father ate them.
The thrust of the commonly told version of the story is that the young Rav Yaakov was faced with eating in the home of someone whose kashrus standards might not be trustworthy, so to avoid embarrassing the host, he made up that he did not eat gebrokts to sidestep the issue, but then to be faithful to his word, he never once again ate gebrokts for the rest of his life.
The correct version told over by Rav Yaakov's son in The Making of a Godol raises some questions:
- Knowing that the host in question was none other than the Alter of Slabodka, it's doesn't make sense that Rav Yaakov would be concerned about the kashrus standards of his host
- Furthermore, the kashrus wasn't an issue - he was eating everything else but turned down the knaidlach
- If that's the case, why didn't Rav Yaakov want to eat the knaidlach, if in his family they grew up eating gebrokts
"...we may posit that is was not a problem with kashrus which prompted my father's declaration in the house of the Alter. This is what occurred: out of frumkeit, our protagonist had made up his mind - sometime before he enunciated it orally at the Alter's table - not to eat gebrokts, a frumkeit stemming from the same reason that hasidim refrain from gebrokts... The Alter realized that his pupil who came from a mithnagdic home had actually always eaten gebrokts and due to an "attack" of frumkeit had decided to begin refraining from it. Since my father had not started to abstain from gebrokts in practice, there was no need for him to go through the procedure of absolving a vow in order to permit himself to eat the knaidlach right then and there. By forcing him to eat the knaidlach, the Alter was negating the student's youthful frumkeit. After he was compelled by the Alter to eat the knaidlach, my father realized that he should not have undertaken that specific frumkeit - and it never became a vow on his part. However, since he did make a statement that he ate no gebrokts, he abided by that practice - not because of an extra hametz precaution, but because a word is a word!
I'll end with two more vignettes about youthful frumkeit from the same chapter in The Making of a Godol:
- Rav Naftali Amsterdam repeated in the name of Rav Yisrael Salanter: "It is good to have frumkeit when young, because when one gets older, frumkeit declines." When he heard this from the Salanter, R' Naftali was sure that it was not actually so, and that the rebbi was saying it out of humility. But as R' Naftali became older he saw it as fact.
- Another quip that Rav Yaakov said in the name of Rav Yisrael Salanter: "In my youth I expected to grow up to be another Vilna Gaon, and had I known that I would only be what I am, I would have done something to myself [זיך אנגעטאהן א מעשה, a euphemism for committing suicide]; on the other hand, if I had not had the ambition to be like the Vilna Gaon, I would not even have become what I am."
